Another “Climate Denier” Stomped

In Brooklyn, they used to talk about a “50 percent stomp.” You angered a mob boss—not enough to be “hit,” just put in your place—and he sent the bully boys. When they finished, you were half-dead. Now, an “80 percent stomp”—that was a different thing.

Wei-Hock Soon, known to all as “Willie Soon,” is an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who investigates such matters as solar effects on climate. During 25 years at that institution, he has published some 60 research papers.

He is also a scientist of that breed that defies the academic, foundation, and government Establishment that today pours hundreds of billions of dollars into research and advocacy, and changes in policy, to enshrine the thesis of “global warming” and make it the ruling consideration of the world economy. He is, in short, a “climate denier.”

Recently, he and other investigators published research so threatening to the “global warming” story that the gang bosses—in this case, the militant environmental political organization Greenpeace—decided he needed a stomp. They sent the New York Times to carry it out.

Recently, [Soon] and other investigators published research so threatening to the “global warming” story that the gang bosses—in this case, the militant environmental political organization Greenpeace—decided he needed a stomp.

Of course, the “global warming” hypothesis—and despite endless vehement repetition, it is no more than that—is that carbon dioxide (CO2) generated by human activities are the cause of long-term warming of the global atmosphere and that in maybe a century will result in catastrophe. And that therefore production and use of oil, coal, natural gas, and every other “fossil fuel” must cease. Even if it shuts down industrial civilization, the modern economy, which uses carbon-based energy to operate its industries, its electrical utilities, its transportation—in short, everything that fuels industry, keeps trucks and trains and planes moving, and runs every labor-saving device.

This year, Dr. Soon, who has published most of his work in peer-reviewed journals in the United States, published a paper in the Science Bulletin, a new Chinese scientific journal, with the title “Why Models Run Hot: Results from An Irreducibly Simple Climate Model.” The paper, researched and written with three other scientists, identifies flaws in the computer models that predict dangerous global warming and concludes that due to mathematical errors the models overstate the impact of CO2 on the climate by a factor of three hundred percent.

Either the conclusions of the paper are wrong (and as yet no technical flaws have been cited) or the whole Climate Catastrophe tale is wrong. It is either-or. What is at stake?

Earlier this month, at a European “summit,” the heads of the G7 countries—the world’s leading industrial economies—agreed to eliminate fossil fuels by the end of this century. It is an 85-year central economic plan to ban the core fuel of modern economies, their life’s blood, with no plan whatever for alternatives. This astounding triumph of the Climate Catastrophe clique, is the result of hundreds of billions of dollars spent by foundations, groups like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, and governments, to establish and promote the Climate Catastrophe theory. Today, government agencies, universities and their researchers, foundations, and “nonprofit” organizations, funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars are married to that thesis.

And all that stands in their way (if anything does, after the G7decision) are a few stubborn “climate deniers.” These scientists get no government funding for their work because the National Science Foundation and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) granting programs are “peer-reviewed” by scientists deeply invested in the Climate Catastrophe hypothesis. Greenpeace and literally hundreds of other groups pressure the universities and other institutions that employ “climate deniers” to fire them. They are attacked in hundreds of publications and  Web sites of the environmental movement. And, of course, the label “climate deniers,” comparing them to “Holocaust deniers,” is an attempt to equate them with people who deny an endlessly documented historical event attested by survivors, journalists, and anyone who cares to visit the remains of the death camps.

What was the Climate Catastrophe clique to do about Willie Soon? Lord Christopher Monckton, lead author of the article in Scientific Bulletin, commented: “We didn’t even think of publishing in the West. We decided the West is now no longer doing science, it is doing propaganda via the learned journals, so we weren’t playing that game anymore.”

Soon after the article was published, there were some 10,000 hits on it. A fiction writer could imagine a political leader, in closeted conversation with a Greenpeace lobbyist, hissing: “I’m going to put my ass on the line at the G7 summit for your ‘everyone agrees’ theory. Now, this ‘Willie Soon’ pops up and you can’t even refute him! Just shut him up!  Shut him up now!”

On the front page of the Sunday edition of the New York Times on February 22 was a story alleging that Dr. Soon obtained $1.2 million in funding for his research over the last decade from energy corporations, electric utilities, and charitable foundations related to the energy industry. The story went on to assert that Dr. Soon did not adequately disclose the sources of his funding in articles published in scientific journals. In short, he was in the pay of the energy companies and their allies, doing their bidding and concealing it from scientific publications, and his conclusions were mere purchased advocacy.

The article, with the byline of Times reporters Justin Gillis and John Schwartz, was actually a slightly edited press release from Greenpeace—specifically from its affiliate, the so-called “Climate Investigations Center”—that had obtained the information about Dr. Soon’s funding. The Boston Globe, Washington Post, Guardian, and Scientific American immediately jumped in with almost identical stories and attacks based on the Greenpeace press release.

If concealing sources is the topic, then defenders of Dr. Soon were quick to point out that the article, with the byline of Times reporters Justin Gillis and John Schwartz, was actually a slightly edited press release from Greenpeace—specifically from its affiliate, the so-called “Climate Investigations Center”—that had obtained the information about Dr. Soon’s funding.

The Boston Globe, Washington Post, Guardian, and Scientific American immediately jumped in with almost identical stories and attacks based on the Greenpeace press release.

It is not clear, as yet, how these charges will hold up. Dr. Soon does not deny that his employer, the Harvard-Smithsonian, received funding from the Southern Company, a utility, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, endowed by the Koch oil fortune, and other sources connected with the energy industry. He says that he complied with disclosure requirements, as he understood them, and as his employer understood them.

The Greenpeace “Climate Investigation Center,” set up not to investigate the climate, but to expose “climate deniers” and take them down, immediately challenged the Harvard-Smithsonian, all the magazines that had published articles by Dr. Soon, and all his funding sources. The scientific publications had various responses. Three of the journals responded that they have no “conflict-of-interest” policy; if the scientists who peer-reviewed the paper recommended it on its merits, funding support for the scientist who did the work is of no concern. Some of the journals said they would look into the matter and one said it had gone back and added a footnote on the Soon article about his funding support. The journal Astronomy and Astrophysics replied that Soon’s funding is irrelevant to his scientific demonstration.

Although Dr. Soon had worked at the Harvard-Smithsonian for quarter of a century, the Smithsonian reacted to the Greenpeace assault by distancing themselves from Dr. Soon. They announced they were conducting an investigation, although none of the information that came out was unknown to them; four scientists on the board resigned in protest against not immediately firing Soon; and the “interim under-secretary for science,” interviewed by the Chronicle of Higher Education, made a rambling response but managed to get in that Dr. Soon’s research “is not the highest quality.” It was a strange pronouncement by a Smithsonian science director about one of its scientists given Dr. Soon’s 25-year association with the Smithsonian.

Defenders of Dr. Soon, including in a letter to the New York Times, pointed out that the grants had not been made to Dr. Soon, but to the Harvard-Smithsonian, which had accepted them, taking its usual 47 percent cut for overhead, and supported Dr. Soon’s research. The Smithsonian had not told these funders, apparently, that Dr. Soon’s research was “not the highest quality.”

In a statement to the press, the famous British “climate denier” , Christopher Monckton, asked how the Smithsonian remark about Dr. Soon’s research squared with an award the Smithsonian made to him in 2003 for “detailed scholarship on bio-geological and climatic change over the past 1,000 years … in official recognition of work performance reflecting a high standard of accomplishment.”

But the Smithsonian has a problem. Other scientists writing about the matter point out that it was the Smithsonian that at several levels had to approve the applications for support, accept the grants and their terms, deal directly with funders, and—as its ethics statement makes clear—provide oversight to ensure no undue influence of donors on research or publications. Dr. Soon’s signature appears on no contracts signed with funders; that role the Smithsonian reserves to itself. Out of such funds, it was the Smithsonian that paid Dr. Soon’s stipend.

All this would suggest that allegations of concealing “conflicts of interest” are open to question, to say the least—a matter to be resolved by the publications and by the Harvard-Smithsonian in its investigation, which, presumably, would have to give Dr. Soon a chance to respond.

But you would never know it from the orgiastic outpouring of literally hundreds of postings by environmental organizations, “real truth” blogs with a leftish slant, and the occasional mainstream left-leaning publication like the Guardian. The message endlessly repeated in terms supplied by Greenpeace: Dr. Soon had been discredited; his work had been discredited; the “climate deniers” had been discredited; the integrity of the “global warming” argument was intact.

I take it that we all understand, based on even a rudimentary grasp of the logic of evidence and proof, that whatever the merits of questioning of policies on conflict-of-interest disclosures, nothing in any story—by Greenpeace, the Times, or anyone else—had any bearing on the scientific data, analysis, and conclusions reported by Dr. Soon and his co-authors. That makes it a straightforward argumentum ad hominem. The scientific validity of Dr. Soon’s findings can be challenged or confirmed only by additional scientific investigation and comment. And, by the way, all authors of the paper in the Scientific Bulletin testify that they did this work on their own time, without support of any funders. They knew what was coming.

But what of the underlying premise of the attacks? What of the allegation that research supported by those who may gain from its results is tainted? That if a company or industry whose future is under attack based on certain scientific hypotheses invests in research that might refute that hypothesis that research is per se suspect?

Well, ask the opposite question. If the source of funding for the research has nothing to gain, one way or other, is the research per se untainted? What about the scientist conducting the research, who has a hypothesis based upon which he received his support? Is he disinterested in the outcome? Or, as is more usual, a scientist who has built his career on a given theory, the basis of all his scientific papers and his reputation. Can he be relied upon to be equally open to the refutation or confirmation of the theory? The answer is: What can be relied upon is the evidence, analysis, and argument presented; either it withstands scrutiny by scientific methods or it doesn’t.

Support for environmental organizations, their research, and their advocacy; for universities and scientists in the “mainstream” of “global warming” research; for the advocacy of the “global warming” hypothesis (and attacks on climate deniers) today receives funding amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars. Some comes from foundations (and from corporations in every industry, some of which support Greenpeace); but the great bulk comes from government, especially EPA. Indeed, the EPA owes its existence, growth, budget, and power to the belief in and confirmation of tenets such as the Climate Catastrophe idea. All of this government funding comes from taxpayers, including every corporation, owner, and employee in the energy industry. They do not choose to support the Climate Catastrophe establishment; they have no choice.

In addition to billions in taxes they pay that support scientists and ideas with which they may disagree, and which may threaten their businesses and livelihood, some spend a few millions on research to question the monolithic party line on Climate Catastrophe science.

Larry Bell, describing himself as a friend of Dr. Soon’s, responded to the Times story, writing that the Times “presumably suggests that no scientist who ever accepts research funding from any special interest-linked sponsors should be trusted.”

He goes on: “If so, then what about confidence in the veracity of information commissioned or otherwise obtained by Greenpeace and its Climate Investigations Center, which describes itself as ‘a group funded by foundations seeking to limit the risks of climate change’? Do these activist organizations make their estimated $363,000,000 annual funding sources publicly available?”

And the Web site JunkScience.com called attention to an article in Nature Climate Change, published May 4, that supported the claim that a new EPA “carbon dioxide rule” would save thousands of lives a year. Good news!  And that is how dutifully the New York Times reported it with the headline “EPA Emissions Plan Will Save Thousands of Lives, Study Finds.” The Times and others reporting this story merely named the study’s investigators and their institutions. Nothing more had to be said, after all, because at the end of the Nature Climate Change article they had stated simply that “The authors declare no competing financial interests.”

JunkScience then gave this list of the authors of the article and their cumulative EPA grants as principal investigators: Charles T. Driscoll ($3,654,698), Jonathan Levy ($9,515,391), Dallas Burtraw ($1,991,346), and Joel Schwartz ($31,176,570).

JunkScience commented: “Now how could Schwartz’s $31,176,575 or Levy’s $9,514,361 or Driscoll’s $3,654,608 from EPA possibly be considered as a ‘competing financial interest’ in an article they wrote in support of EPA’s flagship regulatory effort?”

In contrast with the hundred-billion-dollar “global warming” promotion industry, the funding available to “climate deniers” is truly pocket money. As several scientists wrote in defense of Dr. Soon: Given his reputation and publications, achieved against all odds and all opposition, if he chose to go along with the Climate Catastrophe establishment he could command literally a fortune in government and foundation financial support. And so, does he remain committed to his work seeking answers about global warming while Climate Catastrophe makes him an outcast and pariah for the average of $60,000 a year in stipends from the Harvard-Smithsonian, which must support his laboratory, all research equipment, research supplies, travel, and himself and his family?

Or does an accomplished scientist accept these pathetic amounts of support because there is no possibility of funding from government sources or from the mainstream foundations that toe the “Climate Catastrophe” line even more assiduously than government?

The most suspect source of funding is government. Because bureaucrats cannot pretend to sit in judgment of proposed research, or research reports, all granting agencies set up “peer review” committees of scientists in each field. Such committees work well in private institutions for there are many private institutions with many viewpoints. There is only one government; it is the overwhelming source of all funding and scientists applying for grants are judged by other scientists in their field. Inevitably, scientists have tended to reward grants for research consistent with their views; peer-review committees have tended to reinforce themselves; and those committees all have their fervently favored scientific directions. This is true in cancer research, in heart research, in space research, and every other field—including environmental research where the Climate Catastrophe story is as Establishment as once was the Church of England. The result in many fields has been years and decades in pursuit of one favored research hypothesis and exclusion of others.

But government funding is supposedly so free of bias that scientists with millions of dollars in research support from an agency can simply declare “no conflict of interest” when their research report applauds that agency’s latest policy.

It is more than clear that, if Greenpeace has its way—and it seems to be getting its way—Dr. Soon is in for an 80 percent Brooklyn stomp. The Smithsonian, supposedly setting up an impartial investigating committee, has declared publicly that its own official scientific view “does not support Dr. Soon’s conclusions on climate change” because science “points to human activities as a cause of global warming.”

Christopher Monckton points out that that is also is Dr. Soon’s view. And he says: “Let me be quite clear. At no time has Dr. Soon ever said, written, or even implied that human activities are not ‘a cause of global warming.’

“Indeed, throughout the Science Bulletin paper on Why models run hot, it is self-evident not only that I and my co-authors, including Dr. Soon, accept that our returning some CO₂ to the atmosphere from which it originally came will cause some global warming, but also that we are thoroughly familiar with the scientific reasons why—all other things being equal—more CO₂ in the atmosphere will cause some warming.

“The true scientific debate is not about whether CO₂ causes some warming. Rather, the debate is about how much warming it will cause.”

Anyone who has looked into the “global warming” debate even casually knows that that is what is contested. And the Smithsonian knows it. But its only goal is to distance itself as rapidly and completely as possible from Dr. Soon, who is being stomped, and who is poisonous for the Institution’s fund raising.

The actions of all involved in the assault on Dr. Soon’s reputation—the Times and its media cohorts, the hundreds of environmental organizations and Web sites and blogs, the directors of the Harvard-Smithsonian—make evident that they are following the lead of Greenpace. And the agenda of Greenpeace is and always has been to crush and discredit any dissent from its half-century-old ideological dogma that the modern industrial economy is destroying the environment and now endangering mankind’s survival.

I have observed for half a century the emergence of the environmental movement, impatiently brushing aside “conservation” to insist that nature isn’t man’s to “conserve.” The problem is man himself, who, instead of adapting himself to his environment like all other species, exists by applying reason and knowledge to adapting nature to his needs and desires.

The core opposition of the environmentalists is to man the creator, the producer, who commands nature by understanding and using its laws. This, for the environmentalists, makes man the freak of nature—and its enemy. Climate Catastrophe is only the latest, most global attack on this metaphysical role of man. The case is made at length in one of the most prescient predictions of our time, Return to the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution by Ayn Rand.

In an interview with The Savvy Street, Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace who walked out of the organization some 15 years later, described what caused him to quit:

          “When I left Greenpeace 15 years later they, and much of the environmental movement, were portraying humans as the enemies of the earth,” and that “The leaders of the Greens are extreme leftists, profoundly anti-human, anti-science, and anti-civilization.”

The environmental movement is the direct successor of “Old Left” and “New Left” movements, which by the 1960’s had been fatally discredited by the spectacle of every socialist, communist, and national socialist (Nazi) “experiment” expiring in a horror of totalitarian control, mass liquidation, and slow, painful economic collapse. There was no more mileage in the old socialist horse; freedom and free markets had won hands down around the world in creating prosperity, liberal societies, individual freedom, and every other goal once espoused by socialism. For how this process unfolded, the ideas involved, and the key leaders see Explaining Post-Modernism by Stephen Hicks.

Environmentalism offered a plausible appeal to a public no longer interested in socialist “experiments,” but long in favor of conservation, wildlife preservation, clean air and water, and conserving resources through recycling.

Unfortunately for the newly inspired leftist environmentalists, the market economies responded all too effectually to their initial demands for clean air, clean water, and recycling waste. The charge against the (semi) capitalist economies that they were “polluting” nature did not lead to the statist, controlled economy desired by collectivists. Acid rain, the ozone hole, aerosol cans, “species extinction”—none of it was alarming enough to rally the pubic against the industrial society itself.

The environmentalist movement cycled through all this, demanding and obtaining as much regulation, expenditure of corporate resources, and limits on exploration and development as their endless series of “causes” would carry. But at the end of the day, the market economy still prospered. Just as capitalism had survived and disproved the Marxist prophecy that it would impoverish more and more workers and so lead to revolution. And had survived the Leninist attack that capitalism causes wars as WWII; unfortunately for that charge, the statist, national socialist economies of Germany, Italy, and Japan attacked the freer liberal capitalist nations.

How could it be demonstrated that the market economy, the industrial revolution, and the consumer economy as such was fatally flawed? In this context, global warming was a godsend. Here was a hypothesis that the very motor, the lifeblood of the modern economy—its engine—energy—was going to destroy the globe. The effects were not to be expected now, could not be disproved by observation in our time, because the catastrophe was a century away. But NOW was the time to begin to shut down the the industrial economy, shut down the entire fossil fuel industry—oil, natural gas, coal—and all the new and hateful innovations such as fracking that poured forth new and cheaper energy. Now was the time to shut it down to stem the apocalypse coming a century hence.

This theory, which is just another rationalization for attacking the modern industrial economy, was seized upon by the environmentalist leadership with all the fervor, the moral passion, once attached to communism, the socialist ideal. If environmentalism gained power and influence with exponential speed it is because it inherited the frustrated idealism that once made socialism a world ideal.

There are differences, of course. Every socialist regime from Russia and Eastern Europe to China to Vietnam and Cambodia to Cuba sooner rather than later smothered all dissent—by censorship, regimented education, terror, concentration camps, liquidation. These methods are not available, at least not yet, to the born-again socialist leadership of the environmental movement; but wherever they have gained power they have assiduously fostered the next best thing: bringing to bear the power of the media, pressure groups, advocacy organizations, and influence within universities and government to deliver the equivalent of an 80 percent Brooklyn stomp.

Just ask Dr. Willie Soon.

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About the Author: Walter Donway

Walter Donway has written and edited for Savvy Street since its inception in 2014. His essays and interpretative commentaries on breakthrough books have dealt with philosophy, politics, literature, science, history, psychology, and personalities. His new novel, "Retaking College Hill,” became Amazon’s #1 bestseller in political fiction. This year, the Atlas Society published his Pocket Guide to The Fountainhead and Romanticism Reborn--essays on the Romantic movement in literature and its 20th Century revival in Ayn Rand's novels. His collections of essays and short stories and his "Collected Poems" are available on Amazon. He lives in East Hampton with his wife, Robin.